"I quite like it," he told the Home Affairs Committee, "on the whole it goes in the right direction". But he warned that there were "a lot of recommendations to absorb".

One of the most controversial recommendations from the Winsor Review is that officers should be disciplined if they fail fitness tests.

Hogan-Howe said the current fitness tests are "not that hard". He told MPs that Winsor's proposal would be "easy" to adopt.

"Once we send a message that we want people to keep fit, I think that'll happen very quickly. It's an expectation. It's not expecting too much" he added.

The Met Chief said he took a fitness test a few years ago, quipping "I am no Superman!"

Despite controversy over apparent leaks to the press, Hogan-Howe said there was little need to investigate every incident. "You shouldn't investigate every leak," he declared, "otherwise you'd go crackers".

Hogan-Howe struggled to estimate, when pressed, how many leaks happened from the Metropolitan Police. "I don't know! It depends on how you judge it..." he said.

After the disruption at the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, Hogan-Howe admitted that the police couldn't stop a similar event happening during the Diamond Jubilee. He insisted that the police were vigilant about public safety, but warned "you cannot guarantee that there won't be an embarrassment".